itch.io

Well, and if that's how you have fun, I don't want to stop you having fun. I just also don't want to put things in the way of people that are just exploring mechanics, or make something sloppy in the name of player choice. Though I don't really believe in there being a "right way" to enjoy a game, either. I've got a Rotten Meat item in one of my demos. You can eat it. Doing so hurts you. There's a small chance you might even get cursed. But if you eat it while cursed, it's the best food you have available, while almost every other food becomes either vastly less useful or outright harmful. If you want to try to play the entire game cursed, or drunk, or whatever, I want you to have that option, even if it's sub-optimal.
In that same vein, Maids & Masters has all sorts of opportunities to do something in at least two different ways. The problem is that I also have a lot of people that don't like doing it one way trying it out anyway on a second play through and complaining that the way they don't like feels like a waste of their time and there's no benefit because there's all this combat in their way (when the benefit is being able to go through that combat to get more XP in a game without respawning enemies or a way to grind levels indefinitely). It's really tricky to balance that out so everyone gets to have fun, because there are going to be some players that recognize the value of XP as a resource and slog through every combat encounter they possibly can for the sake of optimizing their levels even if they don't like the combat.

The way that translates to Dawnfall means I could add grind in stretching out missions so there's 50 or 60 - but that's way less fun for people that want the story but not combat, and it's kinda lazy game design. I can do something similar and make those extras side missions, but if all they are is a means to grind, it's still lazy, and that laziness will shine through and make the game less fun.
So it comes back around to making sure the balancing is as tight as possible, and hoping that translates into engaging with mechanics feeling rewarding instead of engagement feeling restrictive or mandatory.

The anthology thing is kinda what I'm already doing. Though they're all completely different games rather than being iterations on the exact same genre.
If you look at my creator page, aside from 3 pages being dedicated to Maids & Masters (my current main project), I've got a classic JRPG where combat is slow and thoughtful, a more modern RPG where combat is meant to be fast and easy and play less of a role in the overall game, a survival RPG with just as many mechanics put into crafting and management as there is combat, this (a tactical strategy RPG with a lot more complexity in and consideration given toward the equipment the characters use), a real-time action survival horror, and a straight up visual novel with none of any of that.
Everything except Maids & Masters and Precious Kouhai is effectively a demo that I made just to see if I had the tools and skills to pull it off (and Precious Kouhai is an excuse for me to learn Ren'Py and get better/faster at animating).

Honestly, the real trouble is that I'm just one person and I've got too many ideas for things I want to make. Just turning all my demos into full games is likely to take me a decade - probably longer - and that's before getting into the 40-something GDDs I have saved elsewhere.

Anyway.

I love theology. I studied it a fair bit when I was younger (mostly through church youth groups). I had questions, so I kept doing research and started dipping my toes into religions besides Christianity and learning how different views on what is functionally the same thing could lead to wildly different interpretations. From there, I got into pop culture things like the World of Darkness TTRPGs (specifically, Demon the Fallen, and a supplement for it called Dies Ignis that details things like the Book of Genesis and the War in Heaven from Lucifer's perspective, and later Demon the Descent from Chronicles of Darkness), TV shows like Supernatural, and on and on.
Demon the Descent in particular sets up player characters as former angels. You had a specific purpose based on the type of angel you were (and you build a "demonic form" to suit that purpose, which they heavily recommend not being humanoid), and you fell because you stopped serving that purpose. Aside from the main storyline the GM wants to tell, each player is supposed to have their own mystery to unravel to learn what their purpose was, why they fell (which could be anything from hesitating to perform your function for a split second to full-blown monstrous villainy), who they want to be now that they have autonomy, and whether you want to try and redeem yourself to return to your function or construct your own personal hell to do whatever you want without worrying about angels hunting you down. And each major "key" thing you learn about yourself unlocks a new level of powers you're able to get. It's a neat game.
Combining the pop culture fiction with actual theology and trying to answer the questions I keep asking myself results in some really interesting ideas (I think, anyway).

I did consider something like a character having more out-of-combat utility than in-combat (though that was for Emma; she's meant to join you as an archer but I didn't have enough time to get her fully implemented), but I couldn't decide on a good way to implement it (my first thought was to have her join and leave at certain intervals, coming back with more stock for you to buy from her at the cost of her not being around for fights, but it felt too arbitrary to do at story points and too punishing to make you choose it deliberately), so I ultimately decided to just have everybody be a party member for the sake of flexibility. Trying to avoid spoilers, once you get your hands on more weapons, Ynna should start being more glass-cannon-y or utility-based over time - depending on what weapons you give her to learn skills from. You could just give her a sword and shield and tell her to deal with it.
Same with the idea of an "evil Arielle." Way too many spoilers.

That's kinda how character depth works, though. I've got plenty of characters that start out giving you nothing but reasons to hate them. Maybe they're trying to trick you into saying something stupid so they can take advantage of it, maybe they want to kick you when you're down, maybe they're just pretending to be a friend so they can abuse you when you lower your guard. But also maybe they're really affectionate once you prove you can hold your own against them, or they'll be your most powerful ally if you can set aside your differences. Or maybe they're irredeemable and are going to snap and start committing atrocities the moment they see a chance to do so. At least some of that depends on what you do as a player rather than there only being one way for the story to go.
I'm expecting to get some backlash once MnM's next story update goes public because there won't be an option to kick in one guy's door and stab him to death because he's been openly hostile toward you for most of the game, and now you have to sit down and have a conversation with him in order to keep moving forward.

I've had similar experiences with what should otherwise be throwaway NPCs. There was one guy in particular (of 7, none of whom were even given enough of a description for players to know if they were orcs or humans or whatever) that one of my D&D parties got so attached to, not only did they refuse to kill him, they helped rehabilitate him so he'd have a shorter prison sentence, then hired him to help one of them run their smithy that they used to make their own armor during downtime.

Which, yeah, is probably pretty far off topic. No worries, though. With the number of keystrokes we've thrown at each other, some meandering is expected. =P